1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a document printer. In particular, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for calibrating a printer to print data at a specified distance from a reference edge of a document moving through a print station.
2. Description of Related Art
Printing apparatuses have been developed for many uses, including the printing of various information in various type fonts, such as E13B, OCRA and OCRB, on paper checks, for example. In most instances, it is desired or even required that the data be printed at a specific location or area on the check. For example, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has established standards that require a specified distance be maintained between a reference edge of the check and the first data character printed thereon. A typical example is the printing of MICR data in E13B font for which the ANSI specification requires the leading edge of the first character to be located in a character field beginning at 5/16 inch .+-.1/16 inch from the reference edge of the check. In printers of the past, the print station would have to be manually calibrated to print data in the desired character field on the check. The check would be positioned at the print station and data or a test symbol would be printed thereon. A manufacturing or repair person (hereinafter field engineer) would usually observe where the data was actually being printed on the check and would then manually adjust or calibrate the print station so that the leading edge of the first character of data was printed beginning at the desired location. This process is time consuming, expensive, and leads to inaccurate results due to human error.